News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

March 27, 2007

hardware

Give your Apple TV the boot, USB-style (coming soon)

Posted Mar. 27, ’07, 8:13 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Hardware

AwkwardTVYou go away for one weekend and the entire Internet goes crazy for this newfangled Apple TV gizmo. Having seen that it does work on standard-definition TVs and can be hacked to play other codecs, I’m as excited about the device’s potential as a kitten hopped up on catnip with a piece of string. But even if I did have a TV with component inputs (hey, my TV may be old, but it was free), I’d be a little hesitant to dissect my brand new, shiny $299 gadget.

Looks like that may not be such a problem after all. One intrepid hacker appears to have devised a way to boot the Apple TV from that “only for service and diagnostics” USB port on the back. The method’s not complete yet, but the AwkwardTV project is hard at work on coming up with a disk image that’ll allow you to boot the AppleTV from an external drive and enable all those settings that will let you install all those fun hacks without messing about with the AppleTV’s delicate innards.

Personally, I give it a few weeks tops before there’s an app available that’ll take care of this whole process for you. Have I mentioned lately how much I love the hacker community?


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